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Factional Classes For Hashan And Cyrene
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No idea if anyone agrees with me but if you can get people to agree on a vision, perhaps a direction could be found?
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
And you won't understand the cause of your grief...
...But you'll always follow the voices beneath.
It honestly amuses me when people argue that the concept of Night or Darkness or whatnot needs to be well-defined, well-understood, or pushed as a factional direction. Isn't the point of being darkness and lies that no one really knows what you or your motives are?
I still have most of that conversation from the first time you left Hashan! Yeah quotes totally broken btw.
And yes basically that was the answer that was given, let me post a piece of it describing night.
Person X says, "I told you that the Night is a phylosophy, a religion without distinct laws
and a rulebook, descendant from the Triad of the Night. It is based upon much of what Darkwalkers, Dreamers and Moonwalkers belief, yet it is slightly different in several aspects."
Anyway, in terms of existing classes, I think runewarden best fits Cyrene, and shaman or alchemist best fits Hashan.
Bards suit Cyrene. The bard House is in Cyrene. Cyrene has all its gardens of the arts and monuments to the muses. Scarlatti loves Cyrene. Restricting them to a factional class would be good in terms of removing a layer of stacked room passives from every large skirmish. I just don't think bards have a strong enough identity to be a factional class. Compare them to priests, who walk with angels, infernals who wield the power of Evil, forestals, who are forestal, or occultists who dabble in forbidden primordial forces and bargain with the Chaos Lords. Bards... sing, and swashbuckle. They aren't aligned with any greater force. Maybe if they had some grander ideas surrounding them? If the Place of Eternal Song was a bigger deal. If they quested for the remaining four of the Five Forgotten Songs from when Eru Ayar sang the world into being: Knowledge, Power, Warmth, Life, Death. If they governed the power of Word, granted to mortals by <pick a god>, through which ideas may be ordered and communicated. This still doesn't really put them in conflict with any other factions, it doesn't really give people a reason to go to war with them or ally with them, but it's a start in terms of associating bards with some polarising ideas or ideals.
Alchemists were specifically designed to be a neutral class, to make cures available to everyone. They just fit Hashan so well, with their astronomy and pseudo-scientific mysticism. With Transmutation being, presumably, made into a general tradeskill, that removes the necessity for alchies to be a neutral class, and creates the option of tying them to Hashan. Bit of a mess to make that change though, and snatch them back after having given them to every city.
Runies sort of share bards' problem, where they're quite neutral in their flavour. You could perhaps say that runes record the language of the Gods spoken at the time of Creation, Runelore regards their deciphering and translation, and none but Cyrene possess the wisdom, judgment, honour, and nobility to wield their power.
How interesting would it be if totems were a faction-specific tool? Suddenly only one faction in the game has reliable access to totems (or two, if you leave them with shamans as well). You could count on runies to market them out. Or you could take it as an opportunity to create and balance some new general and faction-specific city defenses: occultists making pacts to protect specific rooms, forestals growing plants of protection, devo users performing persistent rites.
Shamans fit Hashan really well. Like bards, their House is in Hashan. But like bards, I think they also have the issue of being too neutral in flavour to carry a faction as a factional class. Shamans are conceptually rich, but nothing in Runelore, Curses, and Vodun aligns them with any greater power or polarising ideal, they're all very neutral skills. I believe the Spirit Walkers have a lot of background, but I don't know much about it. You could say that while only Cyrene's runewardens are worthy to wield the power of runes, Hashan's shamans made deals with beings of the spirit realm to glimpse that power anyway, and split the two versions of Runelore; maybe give shamans a darker or more twisted version of it. And then play up the spirit aspect further, assuming that doesn't conflict with the new, revitalised direction in which Hashan is moving. While understandably the class has its mysteries, kept by the SW House, you need to reveal and define some of them to allow people to understand at least the outline of their identity.
[spoiler]Random tangent on increasing shaman flavour/themes by giving them a few new abilities!
It's so hard because I want to give shamans a diverse pantheon of spirits, like RL voodoo, or Shadowrun, but it's hard to avoid that feeling similar to occultists and the twenty Chaos Lords.
Maybe you could create provisions for shamans to create their own spirits? I have little idea of what shaman/Spirit Walker RP is in this game, so this might run contrary to their established pantheon of spirits. But a shaman might be like 'I'm going to venerate the spirit of Cat!' and it creates that Cat spirit anew. And their abilities build up that spirit's power, over time, slowly and on a large scale, like offerings to a god. And you can use its power through a few other abilities. The spirit is reflected purely through the relevant shaman abilities. But if the shaman goes dormant, the spirit's power will tick down and it will eventually disappear. If someone else wanted to venerate Cat, they could join you, and you could have a little cult. The similarity to offering would play up spirits as pseudo-gods. This could be executed through 4-6 abilities within an existing skill.[/spoiler]
If you want to invent new classes, nothing immediately leaps out that suits Cyrene or Hashan better than these four. The Nght is a fitting theme for Hashan, but it's one that alchemists already touch on, with their astrological and astronomic flavour. You could create some kind of shadow-caster class maybe. Creating a class with deep or specific ties to Darkness - or the Moon, or Dreams, by extension - seems risky, because they risk being reliant on Twilight's activity for factional relevance. For Cyrene, I have no idea. Some kind of miner or archaeologist/relic hunter class would be fun, but doesn't make a lot of sense. Every other idea I have is a joke, like a bureaucrat class.
It seems like it would necessarily have to be an arbitrary, hard-coded restriction like alchemists/forestals, and there would be a lot of anger, frustration, and bitterness all around, even if it can be justified well.